One technique for turning an ordinary landscape into a more interesting landscape is to use the ground or ground covering as a way to emphasize distance.

Getting Down (to business)
This beautiful historic building, adorned with bright gold trim sits in the center of Brussels. This photo shows the structure’s intricate detail.	To add a different twist, I placed the camera close to the ground so that the cobblestones become part of an added perspective.

For the most part, we’ve stayed away from the “techie” stuff so far. We’re going to stray slightly to explain how more pixels can come in handy.

When Pixels Count
Although I was using a 400mm lens, I was unable to get any closer to this bald eagle. He was sitting on a small branch in a pine tree 200 feet away and 50 feet off the ground. This photo shows the full frame. It has a resolution of 5600 x 3700 pixels.	To keep the eagle from remaining a speck on my print, I tightly cropped the image. This yields an 870 x 1300 pixel image. Had my original image had fewer pixels, the cropped image would have lost detail.

Picture taking is often quite spontaneous but you can turn it into something that is more planned. To capture that perfect shot, you may want to take a few minutes to find the best view.

Take a Short Walk
What a view! I jumped out of the car and snapped the gorgeous Grand Tetons from the road at the Jackson Lake Dam. My initial thought was that here’s a view that can’t miss. However, a quick in-camera review revealed the orange floats in the foreground.	For this photo, I just walked twenty feet to the left and snapped. The objectionable orange floats had disappeared and a sliver of beach appeared in the viewfinder to yield what I found to be a more interesting shot. What do you think?

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